Hope everyone had a peaceful and cozy Christmas! Happy Boxing day to our neighbors to the north and other places that celebrate that day. I think the U.S. needs to get on that holiday already.

Those are my handmade Christmas cards from this year. They were a ton of fun to make. I still can’t believe Christmas is this week, let alone just two short days away. I am all done with shopping and baking, but still feel all out of whack with the holiday coming. Just feels like it should be another week away or something. I’m hoping to take a few days off this week and just veg out. Really need a day to shut off the phone and computer and just do nothing but watch cheesy tv and eat a bunch of junk food. Will be around here sporadically until the new year.

My Christmas Tree lit up, just pulled it out of the box today. It still needs to be decorated. It’s pink :)  that makes me happy. Well I’m off to see the wonderful Jonatha Brooke in concert, how awesome. She has the most amazing voice!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone has a ton of things to be thankful for this year. Now i’m gonna go eat me some turkey!

I just realized I had not posted any photos of CJ from Halloween. I dress him up every year. He probably sees it as torture or something close. This year though the costume was a pumpkin and it was more like a t-shirt, which he can handle. It had a hood but it wouldn’t stay up and CJ is not a big fan of stuff on his head. So here are some of the highlights of the photo shoot…

He really is such a good dog when it comes to getting his photo taken. He will now sit and stay without me even having a treat in my hand. I kept trying to sit on the ground though during these and he didn’t understand what I was doing so he would come over and sniff me. Silly Dog!

Photo taken by Craig.

I’m a fairy here…too bad you can’t see the skirt!

Happy New Year!! I have not fallen off the face of the earth, but rather decided to take a hiatus from just about everything to spend some wonderful time off with family, friends, and most importantly sleeping in. As my mini vacation is about to spiral to an end at 6:30 a.m. when the alarm goes off it is back to work tomorrow.

My new year was nothing much to speak of, I spent it huddled under a blanket and went to bed promptly at 12:03 or something close to that.

I am excited about the new year, and have many challenges I know I must face this year and hopefully will pull through them all without losing my mind along the way. I have some lofty goals for my illustrations this year, and some other things up my sleeve that will be revealed in due time. I am sure this year will be full of ups and downs as every year is always full of them, but hopefully this is THE year for some stuff to move forward, and little me to keep on trucking down that road.

And I’ll leave you with a little glimpse into my holiday…

My cards went out last week…CJ took a special photo just for the card. Here is the photo I used and below it the cards all assembled and ready to go out.

Just a little sneak peak of my holiday cards, just went out today. Will post photos of what the card actually looks like but don’t want to ruin the surprise for anyone who may get them that reads this blog. But a little hint, CJ’s weekend of trauma didn’t end on Saturday…

Then you end up with a payment that is three months past due, at least they are nice enough to fix it. I guess it pays to be on time all the other times!

Well I had one hell of a weekend. Took CJ to see santa at the petsmart by our house. What a fiasco. While waiting for Santa, in a line full of people and dogs. CJ did really good as all the dogs around us were smaller than him. (he has a thing with larger dogs) Well then a huge shepherd shows up and the dude is all letting his dog get friendly with all the other dogs. I did a good job keeping CJ seated and well away from him. It wasn’t until the line started moving that somehow CJ’s collar came off, good thing I caught it right away grabbed the other collar he usually wears when we go out (has all his tags on it) and then I mounted him, because lets just say my thighs held him pretty good. Probably a sight to see good thing there is no photos of that whole thing.

There is however a very bad photo of me and CJ with Santa. I think after our whole ordeal we both were just ready to go home. Of course that would be to easy, CJ needed his nails clipped. So I think I traumatized the boy enough for the rest of this year, I think I’ll save the bath for the new year…